Monday, May 12, 2014

Grapes of Wrath Excerpt 3 - Migrant Workers

THE MOVING, QUESTING
people were migrants now. Those
families who had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on
forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the
whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the
highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people.
Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people.
There in the Middle—and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not
changed with industry, who had not farmed with machines or known the power and
danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of
industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial
life.

And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and
they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the
camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them.
The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They
were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united
them—hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an
invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns,
guarding the world against their own people.

In the West there was panic when the migrants
multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property.
Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never
wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants.
And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend
themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders
bad, as a man must do before he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are
dirty and ignorant. They're degenerate, sexual maniacs. Those goddamned Okies
are thieves. They'll steal anything. They've got no sense of property rights.

And the latter was true, for how can a man without
property know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring
disease, they're filthy. We can't have them in the schools. They're strangers.
How'd you like to have your sister go out with one of 'em?

The local people whipped themselves into a mold of
cruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them—armed them with clubs,
with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can't let these Okies get out of
hand. And the men who were armed did not own the land, but they thought they
did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little
storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something,
even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week.
S'pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little storekeeper
thought, How could I compete with a debtless man?

And the migrants streamed in on the highways and
their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no
argument, no system, nothing but their numbers and their needs. When there was
work for a man, ten men fought for it—fought with a low wage. If that fella'll
work for thirty cents, I'll work for twenty-five.

If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty.

No, me, I'm hungry. I'll work for fifteen. I'll
work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, comin' out,
an' they can't run aroun'. Give 'em some windfall fruit, an' they bloated up.
Me, I'll work for a little piece of meat.

And this was good, for wages went down and prices
stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent out more handbills to bring
more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now
we'll have serfs again.

And now the great owners and the companies
invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and
the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And
as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price
of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no
canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks,
and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were
fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their
credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the
highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for
work.

And the companies, the banks worked at their own
doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved
on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up
rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great
companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.
And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and
spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants
and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.